Kay oh Ray: International Race Day.

little garden.

Wellp.
This weekend flew by as usual ( but so do the weeks).
On Friday, our school (Corem) had a PD day with all of the Corem schools in the area. This meant we didn't have school in the morning and went to our friend, Christine's school in the early afternoon, located in PNU, one of the University districts.
We all had to create a mock lesson and 'demo' it for a small group for about ten minutes.
Not that fun, but it was cool to meet some new people and get new ideas for teaching.
Overall I am pretty impressed with our school and its professionalism.

THREE of the teachers at our school got the award for best presentation in their group (8 groups), great job to Brett, Corina, and Tracy! But, unfortunately they missed out on the delicious dinner that we got to eat following the meeting.
It was called Shabu Shabu (?) and consisted of a giant pot of broth divided in half, into which we threw thin slices of beef and vegetables, and on the other half, we put seafood, including octopus.....:)
The owner of Corem ended up at the same restaurant and paid for all of our meals, then our lovely director, Michelle, saved us an hour subway ride and drove us home.

On Saturday morning, after a mini pre-race-day workout at the gym, we ventured to Nopodong on the subway, to the bus station where we easily caught a bus to Gyeongju, for the very affordable price of.... 4.50!

Bus was amazingly comfortable and I kind of wished to stay on it longer. We had assigned seats, and leg rests, and it was way more comfortable than any plane I've been on.

We arrived at Gyeongju around 1pm, and discovered that our hotel was about 20 minutes outside of town. Based on this we decided to stick around town, and check out the race course and some sites.

We first went to the track, where the race started, and then visited Cheomseongdae, East Asia's oldest astrological observatory, and Anapji pond, a waterway constructed in 674, where a bunch of artefacts fell in when the temple near it burned. Now it is filled with Koi (?) fish.... which I find terrifying, but it was a beautiful area.

really old.

As we were sitting outside afterwards, a Korean man gave us something that looked like chestnuts and tasted like an apple. We took it an ate it without thinking twice. Such is Korea.

We then continued on to a park full of giant tombs, called Tumuli park. This was another beautiful place where lots of Korean families were out having picnics. One mother with her two kids gave us some oranges. Gamsa hamnida!

Tumuli park.

At this point we were pretty beat, so we finally took a cab back to our hotel, 'The Hotel Commodore', which was located on Bomun lake, a resort area outside Gyeongju.
Although the hotel was advertised as a posh, high class resort hotel, it was more like ' The Shining'. The room service menu said there were 5 different restaurants, which we found to be all deserted. After a search, we decided on the 24$ buffet at the hotel, which served us well but was a little creepy as we were the only ones there.

Sunday morning, we grabbed a cab to the race site. I was pretty excited and nervous, hoping to place in the top 5, because top 5 in each gender get a prize. It was an awesome atmosphere, once again. Lots of people around, not as many foreigners as the Busan race, but still many people. The races started at 9:00, marathon followed by the half , then the 10km and 5 km.

I started out nice and relaxed, and resisted the urge to surge ahead when I saw other girls passing me. I ran a really good race and felt relaxed and strong. At the turn around, I saw only 5 girls ahead of me, and was so close to the 5th that I knew I would pass her eventually. At around the 7km mark, the 10km course converged with the 5km course, which was full of walkers, going 5 abreast on a path that was about 8 feet wide.
This was SUPER frustrating, and I kind of lost my focus because I was too busy telling people to get out of the way. When I got to the track for the final few hundred metres, I was only seconds behind the girl in 5th. I saw her getting approached by the race organizers ( probably telling her when the awards were!!)

On the upside, I ran a PB, 41:52 by my watch, which is 40 seconds faster than my last pb, and a minute faster than my race 2 weeks ago.

I am a little disappointed that I didn't beat the girls that I should have, but I finished strong and didn't find the race that hard, managing to run a time that I have been trying to attain for the past 2 years.

Tim had a frustrating race, due to poor signage, though he should have/would have run his best 5km ever and probably won, he got caught up in the 10km course and didn't end up finishing with his race. Not a fun thing to have happen!

Following the race, we went back to the hotel and spent the afternoon biking around Bomun lake. It was an absolutely gorgeous fall day, and even though the tourist season is obviously over, there were lots of people out and about.

We left around 3pm, and made it home safe and sound. A lovely weekend spent on our first vacation within Korea!